


Don't Go Counting Sheep

by kore_rising



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-27
Updated: 2010-08-27
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:00:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kore_rising/pseuds/kore_rising
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Arthur, are you still awake?"</p><p>Ariadne's voice is sodden with sleep as it comes out of the cocoon of my linens, but I can still hear the undercurrent of worry in it that appeared three days ago and has yet to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Go Counting Sheep

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: M  
> Pairing: Arthur/Ariadne  
> Notes/Warnings: Written for [this](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/7339.html?thread=10569643#t10569643) prompt at [](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/profile)[**inception_kink**](http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/): Arthur is extremely stressed out and cannot sleep, so Ariadne sucks him off so he can finally get some rest.  
>  The characters, setting and story of Inception are the property of Christopher Nolan and no cash is being made from this story.

~*~*~

"Arthur, are you still awake?"

Ariadne's voice is sodden with sleep as it comes out of the cocoon of my linens, but I can still hear the undercurrent of worry in it that appeared three days ago and has yet to leave.

Three days ago when I told her I had only managed six hours of fitful rest in the last forty eight.

Four days ago when I realised we might be heading down a road too dangerous to countenance, not for me and certainly not for her.

Five days ago when Cobb called and said he'd been approached about inception again and wanted to take it on.

I've been lying on my back staring at the ceiling. The shadows of New York rain blur and flicker above me, melting the lines of the trees outside into kaleidoscopic whirls. I've been looking at them, praying that somehow I'll find sense or reason in the chaos. That somehow I'll find the words to say to Cobb to tell him once was bad enough, that the more we do it the more risky our world becomes, even more so than when all we did was crack open minds to steal their precious contents. Now I have more to lose than ever and I can't, I won't, take the risk. Extractors are adrenaline junkies by our nature, we live on the razor fine edge between real and unreal, we seek the high of our success, but there are some things that even we should step back from, the cost being too great to outweigh the gain. 

Ariadne rolls over, the sheets rustling against her movement.

The first night I couldn't sleep I lay next to her and counted her eyelashes, watching her dreams skitter across her closed lids. She still dreams, and sometimes I envy her the oblivion of that state.

The second night I counted her breaths, trying to imitate the easy rhythm as her heart beat it out, but in the end I just lay in the dark and listened to her inhale and exhale, inhale and exhale, the stubborn persistence of a body full of life. A fragile, tender thing. So vulnerable to guns, knives, bombs, the billion instruments the world can turn on soft skin and delicate bones until they break apart in a hot screech of agony. I wanted to screw her up into me then, as if my body could be her armour and no one, no hurt, would ever reach her.  But I knew I couldn't , and the grey fingers of dawn tugging the blinds scorned me for my weakness.

The third night I held her. She was warm and vital in my arms and smelt of roses, plums and sweat. She slept against me so trustingly but I felt the guilt of a betrayer. I could be about to dance her into hell yet here she lay, uncaring and unburdened, while I clutched her to me like a totem. She mumbled my name in her sleep and I replied every time.

The fourth night I wondered if we might ever have a life like other couples. Like Dom and Mal, with matching rings, a house and children with chocolate brown eyes and soft dark hair messing with her models and dressing up in my ties and jackets. Or would we spend our lives living from hand to mouth, snatching the crumbs of bliss from the jaws of risk, never treading the Earth more than heavily than angels do? I stroked her hair where it draped over my pillow, screwed up my eyes and hoped for sleep in all it's endless darkness where nothing could reach us.

And now, the fifth night. Rain streaked and soft, sleep slipping through my fingers like her skin. Her hands bridge the space between us, twisting her fingers into mine.

"I can feel you thinking, you know."  She whispers. "Is it Cobb?"

"Yes."

She sits up in a sigh of cotton and kisses me gently, fondly, then cradles my face.

"He'll understand. Go to sleep. I'll stay awake and think of what to say to him if you like. Let me curse him for a while." I can hear her smile when she speaks.

"Thank you." I kiss her upturned lips, breathing in the scent of her pillow warmed skin, "But it won't help."

"So, what would do you think? Hot milk? A hot shower? Whisky? Counting sheep? A massage?"

"I honestly don't know." And I almost hate myself for admitting it, even to her. Her hands slip down to rest on my shoulders, and she kisses me again, infinitely softly as only she can, pouring out her comfort with generous lips.

"Will you let me try something then?" She asks gently, resting her forehead on mine and letting our noses brush in a slow Eskimo kiss. "You need to sleep. You're going to go crazy otherwise." This earns a wry chuckle from us both.

"Look, if it doesn't work you won't have lost anything. And if it does, you'll be able to rest. Please, Arthur?"

Maybe it's the worry in her voice that makes me give in. Maybe it's the fact that Ariadne, who never normally pleads (tells, states, asks, demands or even, sometimes, begs but never _pleads_ ) is doing so. Maybe it's that just right now all I want is peace, quiet and the blissful salve of slumber.

I close my eyes briefly and exhale the words onto her cheek. "OK. Please."

"Lie down for me." She sits up and carefully presses me down to the pillows, leaning over me until we are both hidden under the curtain of her dark waves.  
"Close your eyes." She whispers in my ear, then lets her mouth find mine again. Her kiss is unhurried, a languid blur of lips, tongue and teeth that lingers on me with the touch of someone savouring a treat. Her hands stroke my shoulders, down my chest and arms; her fingertips firm on my skin as if her touch alone can will me to relax. As slow as her mouth is her hands are slower; each joint and muscle, each mole and scar she finds and traces over as if she is committing me into her memory in every minute detail by feel alone.

"Breathe," she sighs, barely leaving our kiss, her lips almost touching mine, "as slowly and deeply as you can." When she returns to our embrace I inhale, and I taste her. She exhales, and I breathe her back in.

"Concentrate on just your breath." She instructs quietly, as her mouth works a meandering trail across my jaw, down my neck and across my clavicles. "Just your breath," she repeats, letting her tongue spiral around each one of my nipples before blessing them both with a kiss. "In and out," she almost croons, her hair dragging over my skin as she kisses each rib; over my diaphragm, where she rests her cheek briefly; the jutting iliac crest of each side of my pelvis;then my navel, her hands either side of my abdomen stroking my stomach in time with the flicker of her eyelashes.

"That's it," her kisses dawdle lower, her hands following, the tip of her nose nuzzling into me so I can feel the warm draft of air over my skin as she goes. "Just breathe." Her left hand ghosts over my cock and I jump reflexively, only to feel her shh me, her right hand smoothing my thigh. Then I feel her lips on me again, placing slow, dry, soft kisses down my length from the head, where her tongue slips out and swipes over me for one blissful second, down the lattice of veins which surge under her touch, to the base where she carefully presses a kiss on each of my testicles. There it the briefest pause where her hands move to carefully push my legs apart and suddenly I feel the warm, wet suckle of her mouth around my balls, her tongue stroking the underside as her lips seal around me. My breathing accelerates suddenly, one hand reaching blindly towards her smooth dark head as she works, a soft hum vibrating through her chest, up her throat and into me. I can hear myself groan and stretch against the sheets, every sense, every drop of blood rushing furiously to my groin.

She releases me gently, letting her left hand take the place of her mouth, cradling me as her lips return to sprinkling kisses over the tops of my thighs, my lower stomach and every so often my cock. I can feel her body pressing into mine and she feels like warm silk, her nipples pebbled hard and urgent when they meet my skin.  
When I try to touch her though she catches my hand and says softly  "Uh uh. This one is just for you, OK? You can worry about me later. Just keep breathing nice and..." She bends her head and my brain fuses in a sharp burst as she wraps the soft, cool length of her hair around my shaft and starts to stroke me, "...slowly." Her small hand corkscrews carefully around me, each stroke punctuated by a kiss to the tip of my cock; with each kiss her mouth opening a little wider, her tongue circling me a little more, dipping carefully into the small slit which she finds there or simply tracing the shape of my head with her kittenish touch. She works me, squeezing, licking and stroking until my hips start to surge upwards towards her face. "Ah," she chuckles quietly, breaking off from a particularly wet kiss, "I guess you're ready then."

But before I can ask, before I can draw in my next breath it seems, her mouth closes over me, suckling me in. I feel the slickness of the insides of her cheeks and the urgent strokes of her tongue caressing my cock as she drops her head, her saliva bathing me and the sudden butt as I hit the back of her mouth. She draws back, the pressure of her mouth increasing as she traces swirls over me with the tip of her tongue. One hand grips me firmly at the base, twisting back and forth in time with the pulses of her sucks. She all but lets me free, lavishing a few moments on the sensitive tip, before she drops down again, lips meeting her hand until it feels like I'm in a liquid vice of pleasure.  
By now I've forgotten my breathing, Cobb, inception, everything but my beautiful Ariadne and her mouth wrapped around me. I have one hand resting on her head, her slippery, fine hair a wonderful counterpoint to every other sensation she giving me. The other has screwed the sheet into a knot beneath it as I listen to her and me, moaning, gasping, panting her name as she goes, telling her I want to come or sticking on a single syllable as she finds and exploits tiny spots that send shivers though me.

Just when I think that it cannot get any better than this, she presses her other hand into my stomach and, with what I know must be some effort, she takes me deeper into herself. Her tongue arches against me and I swear I am going to change the habit of a lifetime and scream the building down when I come. I try not to thrust up into her, but she keeps going, letting me into her mouth, working around me, lips, tongue, the soft scrape of her teeth, then bringing me deeper, holding me there then easing me back, again and again. Her left hand keeps up a constant stroke around my balls, and they feel hot and heavy in her fingers, the throb of my arousal spreading outwards as she works me closer and closer to coming.

I know she must know, because her actions begin to become more urgent, all her softness lost as she takes me and quite literally lets her mouth feast on me. I can barely breathe, even as I force out the words to tell her _I'm going to come, I'm going to come, I'm going to..._ She takes one last deep swallow and I let go, my body orgasming in a hot rush of words, breath and ejaculate; one hand twisting into her hair and the other clenched tight into a fist as my body rises up to meet hers and she rides it out with me.

When I drop back, my heart still racing in my ears, I feel her lips pulse carefully around me, her tongue delicately laving me clean, before she releases me with one last kiss. My limbs feel hot and heavy, splayed across the bed in the afterglow, as she reaches across and pulls the coverlet over me. Her kiss is gentle once more when she curls against me, and I can taste myself in her mouth.

"Go to sleep, Arthur." She sighs softly as my eyelids drop, "Go to sleep and have sweet dreams."  
She brushes her hand over my face, feeling the smile there and kisses me again.

"Sleep," she commands, and with that I open my arms to the dark oblivion of rest, of peace and of silence and fall straight in.

~*~

That night I dream.

In my dreamscape she stands, her brunette hair windswept and her dress lapping at her calves, smiling and holding my hand. When she speaks she reminds me, as if I could ever forget, that she is deep enough and strong enough to care for me too.

~*~*~

**Author's Note:**

> A/Ns: The lines: "I can feel you thinking"/"Let me curse [him] for a while instead." are from _The X Files: I Want To Believe_ (Mulder says them to Scully when she, too, is struck with sleeplessness.) I've always found it beautifully romantic in an understated way, the sign of one person who knows another well enough to hear the pattern of their life even when they're just lying in bed next to each other. So I couldn't resist gifting them on Ariadne.  
> 


End file.
